PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
World Fantasy Award-winning author Nalo Hopkinson was born in Kingston, Jamaica and also spent her childhood in Trinidad and Guyana before her family moved to Toronto when she was sixteen. Her groundbreaking science fiction and fantasy features diverse characters and the mixing of folklore into her works. Hopkinson won the Warner Aspect First Novel contest for Brown Girl in the Ring, as well as the John W. Campbell and Locus Awards. Her novel, Midnight Robber, was a New York Times Notable Book and she has also received the Spectrum, Sunburst, Campbell, and Prix Aurora awards. Though she has published multiple works, Hopkinson has faced many obstacles, including suffering from anemia and fibromyalgia. She spent years too sick to read or write, and was sometimes homeless. Her view on these dark periods can be both realistic and humorous: But every so often I'll go through an old notebook or find a file I don't recognize and open it up, and there's a page or two of writing that I did during that time that I don not remember. At some level I was still writing. The cool part about it is, the writing is pretty good! ( Locus, September 2013) Hopkinson currently teaches in the Creative Writing department at the University of California, Riverside.
Praise for Falling in Love With Hominids Los Angeles Public Library Best of 2015 Fiction The Conversationalist: Best Books of 2015 Open Letters Monthly, Top 2015 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books Read, Steve Donoghue, editor Locus 2015 Recommended Reading List: Best Collection Hopkinson's stories dazzle --NPR The stories all share a common thread of magic, which is often woven, whether subtly or blatantly, into the fabric of everyday reality, allowing characters to react to the strange or the impossible as it crosses into their world. Hopkinson also draws frequently on her Caribbean upbringing and heritage, and her characters' voices are distinct and authentic, both in their speech patterns and in their ways of looking at their surroundings. Hopkinson's fans will be delighted by these examples of her wide-ranging imagination. --Publishers Weekly A Barnes and Noble Bookseller's Pick for August 2015 The award-winning author of Midnight Robber and Brown Girl in the Ring returns with a collection of fantastical short fiction, assembling a decade's worth of stories of magic and the supernatural intersecting with everyday life. --Barnes and Noble Hopkinson's stories stack up well against their source of inspiration, but her voice is clearly her own, charged with deep feeling and vast imagination. --San Francisco Chronicle There is something for everyone in this collection. Hopkinson manages to make a reader's skin crawl in one story and smile in the next. It's a mixture that keeps you reading just to see what she will come up with next. A great collection from a highly imaginative and insightful mind, Falling in Love with Hominids is a must read for fantasy and short story fans --Portland Book Review Falling in Love with Hominids overflows with originality, beauty, and Hopkinson's trademark depiction of human decency... --Women's Review of Books Every reader will surely find something to love, as this collection is often hilariously funny, deeply tragic, intensely engaging, and strongly steeped with fantastic elements. --Civilian Reader Hopkinson does some beautiful things with the art of writing, her imagination is without bounds, and she challenges both readers and writers to go beyond what we see as the status quo. The book is filled with characters of colour, with LGBT characters, with characters who, one way or the other, are memorable and real and get to take part in some amazing stories. --Bibliotropic A Book Riot Best Book We Read in July Every story feels like a perfectly formed separate entity, but pulling them together is the effortless blending of the fantastic and the mundane. --Book Riot Falling in Love with Hominids is a wonderful treat for Nalo Hopkinson fans and a fantastic introduction for new readers. --New York Journal of Books In this collection of luminous stories, Nalo Hopkinson writes with an observant intensity... --World Literature Today Nalo Hopkinson paints the places she knows in the way that Marquez embodies the soul of Central America, or the way Bradbury captures Illinois summers. --Fiction Foresight [U]nique and wonderful and disturbing... Falling in Love with Hominids is at its heart a story of hope. --Books Without Any Pictures This is an outstanding collection that really gives insight into [Hopkinson's] storytelling, the breadth and insight with which she writes. --The Conversationalist Falling in Love with Hominids reveals a writer at the height of her powers. --The Canadian Science Fiction Review a re-invigoration at the sense of wonder about human experience. --Speculating Canada All the stories display the various and eclectic writing skill Hopkinson contains in such ample amounts. The writing, too, is terrific. --Paper Wars Nalo Hopkinson is one of the most exciting writers working today. --Best Science Fiction Books Praise for Nalo Hopkinson One of our most important writers. --Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize--winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao A major talent. --Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves Nalo Hopkinson has had a remarkable impact on popular fiction. Her work continues to question the very genres she adopts, transforming them from within through her fierce intelligence and her commitment to a radical vision that refuses easy consumption. --Globe & Mail One of the best fantasy authors working today. --io9 As an exciting new voice in our literature. --Edmonton Journal ...like Samuel R. Delaney and Octavia E. Butler, [Hopkinson] forces us to consider how inequities of race, gender, class and power might be played out in a dystopian future. --The News Magazine of Black America Caribbean science fiction? Nalo Hopkinson is staking her claim as one of its most notable authors... --Caribbean Travel and Life Hopkinson's prose is a distinct pleasure to read: richly sensual, with high-voltage erotic content and gorgeous details. --SCIFI.com For Brown Girl in the Ring Nalo Hopkinson's first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring, is simply triumphant. --Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina Hopkinson lives up to her advance billing. --New York Times Book Review [Hopkinson] has created a vivid world of urban decay and startling, dangerous magic, where the human heart is both a physical and metaphorical key. --Publishers Weekly Great --Octavia E. Butler, author of Parable of the Sower An impressive debut precisely because of Hopkinson's fresh viewpoint. --Washington Post Book World A parable of black feminist self-reliance, couched inpoetic language and the structural conventions of classic SF. --Village Voice For Skin Folk Everything is possible in her imagination. --Science Fiction Chronicle Nalo Hopkinson, award-winning author of Brown Girl in the Ring and Midnight Robber, has released an impressive collection of short stories entitled Skin Folk...well crafted and brilliantly written. --Barnes & Noble For The Salt Roads The Salt Roads is like nothing you've read before... The characters' stories are heartbreaking and beautiful, living beyond the novel's pages. Hopkinson's writing is like a favorite song. --Tananarive Due, American Book Award-winning author of The Living Blood With her conjurer's art, with daring and delightful audacity, Nalo Hopkinson reaches into the well of history. --Sandra Jackson-Opoku, author of The River Where Blood is Born
